By Jim Selman | Bio
Do we have an economic problem or a spiritual problem?
My teacher and friend Dr. Fernando Flores was a candidate for the
Presidency of Chile. In one of his speeches, he declared, “We don’t have
an economic problem so much as we have a spiritual one…we’ve forgotten
who we are…we lack a vision and purpose for our nation”. He dropped out
of the presidential race, but this phrase has stayed with me. I think it
is true of most nations, including our own.
There is a maxim that states, “A vision without action is just a dream.
Action without a vision is a nightmare.” A vision provides a context, a
ground of being for our lives. A vision is not a goal: it is the
organizing principle for whatever goals we may have. A vision is a place
to stand—the future as possibility—a place to ‘come from’ in all that
we undertake.[ Read More]
Written by eldering at Fearless Aging
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By Jim Selman | Bio
I was playing a trivia game and had to answer
what the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are. I got three out of four,
but had to go to go to Wikipedia to get them all: War, Famine, Conquest
and Death. These traditional Biblical symbols mark the ‘end of time’,
when all things are put right and presumably all karma is erased and
this journey will be complete. In researching each of them, I learned
that ‘conquest’ is best translated in today’s language as ‘corruption’.
The ancient notion of ‘famine’ can also be understood to encompass
epidemics and plagues. ‘War’ represents violence in all forms and Death
is pretty self-evident. These seem to me to be a good list of the dark
side of “The Force” which threatens our way of life and our collective
future.[ Read More]
Written by eldering at The Great Turning
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By Jim Selman | Bio
The older I am, the more I reflect on the
aphorisms all around us and wonder why it is so difficult to accept and
live with this obvious wisdom. Robert Fulghum memorialized many of them
in his bestseller All
I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. All of these
little ‘nuggets’ of wisdom we’ve accumulated over the years are
generally, well, wise. It is befuddling why so few people take them to
heart. Why do so many spend a lifetime learning these kinds of lessons the hard
way?[ Read More]
Written by eldering at Wisdom in Action
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By Jim Selman | Bio
I work with organizations that are attempting
to change. At the beginning of working with a new client, I point out
what’s missing for any organization that has recurring or seemingly
intractable problems: what’s missing is a different way of observing.
Whether we’re talking about a company, a community or a continent, a new
perspective always gives us an opening to create new possibilities,
have new choices and take new actions: a new way of observing the world
effectively gives us a different future than some variation of ‘more of
the same’. We need to stop asking what the problems are and start
asking why they persist. When we do, we begin to realize that we
have a paradigm problem. Until we deal with that, none of our seemingly
intractable problems—from staggering debt to unending war, climate
change to the underlying causes of the mortgage crises—can be solved.
Albert Einstein expressed this concisely when he said that sometimes our
problems cannot be solved by thinking the way we thought when we
created them.[ Read More]
Written by eldering at Wisdom in Action
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 By Jim Selman | Bio
There are two kinds of break-ups. The
‘soft’ breakup is where both parties in a relationship more or less
stay in communication and talk about their differences, their
discontent or their changing needs until they arrive at a conclusion
that “This just isn’t working” and agree to go their separate ways.
Sometimes they remain friends. In any case, this kind of mature and
honest ending allows both parties to let go of past expectations or
disappointments, eventually reach some degree of ‘completion’ with the
romance and move on with their lives. The ‘hard’ breakup is when[ Read More]
Written by eldering at Fearless Aging
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By Shae Hadden
Choose to wait, wish and hope. At the end of your life, when you
reflect on the chance encounters, strange coincidences, unlikely timing,
and uncanny
events you experienced, you may say that all of your 'bad luck' was
your 'destiny'.
Choose to be, do and have. At the end of your life, when you
reflect on all the chance encounters, strange coincidences, unlikely
timing, and uncanny events you experienced, you may say that all of
your 'good fortune' was your 'destiny'. Do you see the difference? (Condensed from a TUTS Adventurers Club Thought for the Day)
[ Read More]
Written by eldering at Wisdom in Action
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 By Jim Selman | Bio
We’ve all experienced a situation—whether in
a marriage, friendship or business relationship—where we find ourselves
thinking about the other person and saying, “I love you, BUT…”. It’s in
that moment we realize a particular behavior of theirs is not
acceptable to us and has become a source of stress and resentment. For
many, resentment almost always leads to a downward spiral of
self-destructive behavior and the eventual destruction of the
relationship. I was coaching a friend recently who is in such a dilemma.[ Read More]
Written by eldering at Personal Empowerment
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By Jim Selman | Bio
When we know that there is an end to a
particularly strenuous period of work, we can feel energized and become
even more productive. When we think that the flow of work is endless or
that we have no choice in the matter, then we may begin to break down,
feel disempowered, become tired. Life begins to feel like a burden. I have found that resolving these kinds of chronic negative moods about workload and feeling overwhelmed begins by[ Read More]
Written by eldering at Health
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 By Jim Selman | Bio
In a recent New York Times op-ed column,
Bob Herbert challenged all of us to get down out of the bleachers and
take on at least one of today’s intractable problems. He pointed to the
courage of many Civil Rights activists in the '60s and '70s, including
Andrew Goodman who was murdered by the KKK and of course Rosa Parks. We
remember these individuals and many like them because, like
revolutionaries everywhere, they put their lives on the line for
something worth dying for. They stood[ Read More]
Written by eldering at Fearless Aging
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 By Jim Selman | Bio
It is almost impossible to turn on the television or read a
newspaper or a magazine without encountering one pundit, expert or “man
on the street” either talking about the future or trying to blame
someone for something. Our media commentary is rarely about what is
happening now: mostly it’s about what happened in the past or what
someone thinks is going to happen in the future. Combine the
establishment media with all of the blogging and chatting going on, and
it is incredible how fixated we are on what will happen next.[ Read More]
Written by eldering at Wisdom in Action
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